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Larry Willmore wrote: 'I do not recall that Adam Smith ever addressed  
the problem of public goods' 
 
How about the following, from a listing of the duties of the sovereign  
(Glasgow ed. IV.ix.51, see also V.i.c.1): 
 
'the duty of erecting and maintaining certain public works and certain  
public institutions which it can never be for the interest of any  
individual, or small number of individuals, to erect and maintain;  
because the profit could never repay the expense to any individual or  
small number of individuals, though it may frequently do much more than 
repay it to a great society.' 
 
John Rae (1834) had a pretty clear idea of a public benefit arising  
from an invention - the pioneer cannot make a profit individually, but  
society benefits. For example: 
 
'a new channel might be opened from the exhaustless river of human  
power, springing from the mingled sources of nature and art . . . [but] 
there is an obstruction . . . No individual will open up the channel,  
because, were he to do so, he could derive no more benefit from the  
labor than others who had not labored. . . . the legislator, the power  
acting for the whole society, might do so' (New Principles. pp. 55-6).  
 
Tony Brewer ([log in to unmask]) 
 
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